The Korean Plague

Ok, so it’s not actually the plague. It’s not like I’m walking around covered in buboes or anything. Although to hear me cough, you might think that I should be.

I’ve been sick pretty much since I got here. It started with a runny nose and a head cold. Then progressed to a sore throat. Most recently it’s been a nasty respiratory condition. Similar to the plague. But without the rats and the fleas and the buboes. Or the threat of scurvy or cholera or something. You get the point. I haven’t somehow been transported back to the mid-fourteenth century. I’m just sick.

Apparently it’s quite common to get really, really sick when you first arrive here. Something about Asian “super bugs” and the generally poor air quality of Seoul and the surrounding areas. According to my co-workers, for 10, 000 won I can go to the doctor down the street from the school and get an injection that will have me feeling like Mary Poppins within the hour. I keep telling them that I prefer to build up my immunity naturally. My reluctance has nothing to do with the thought of getting a rather large needle filled with an unknown substance stuck into my ass cheek and subsequently injected into my body. Nor has it anything to do with the fact that that substance may contain penicillin, to which I am allergic, and for which I do not know the Korean word, thereby limiting my ability to inform said doctor of the aforementioned allergy. Natural is the way to go.

Thanks to my plague-that-is-not-the-plague I have had to back out of a hiking trip I was going to go on this weekend with Kyle and a bunch of other people, in favour of bed rest and orange juice. It’s my only holiday until Christmas and I get to spend it with the casts of Flight of the Conchords and Coupling. And the omnipresent mosquitoes that have taken up residence in my apartment. Maybe they have something to do with it. Korean malaria, anyone?